Auckland and Wellington. And yes indeed – I should blog on that, good thinking 🙂

These points are all very true – and even independent consultants can talk themselves into giving advice that underplays some costs or benefits for a result!

And that is why transparency is something we need to be vigilant about 🙂

Of course. Cabinet papers, in particular. But these were the regulatory impact statements which (are meant to be) the independent officials’ documents. Politicians can also be captured by their departments (GCSB?).

Officials within government often have to revise to the point where their message can not be quite how the analysts would have liked to put it. I have sympathy.

I am lucky I get to just walk around saying things as I interpret them – and then hopefully having people disagreeing with me to tighten it up 🙂

The road to hell is always pathed with good intentions – I have no doubt many of these things involve good intentions (the view that subsidisation will make us all richer). But there should be economists there pointing at trade-offs and distributional consequences – where have they all gone off to 😉

I think that there is heaps of scope for debate around what is fair, and like I say in this post I am arguing with specific value judgments in mind. But the best thing we can do is to try to make our assumptions and the trade-offs clear, and I’m not sure politicians have the incentive to put in the time to do that – even if they had the intent to in the first place!

“There are two sides to a social contract and if the disadvantaged get
90% of the prime time then it isn’t a contract but an authoritarian
decree”

This is an interesting point – I appreciate what you are saying, and thanks for raising the point.

From my standpoint the disadvantaged get little of the actual focus of the social contract – and we usually arbitrarily focus on the middle classes and people who are well enough off to live, but not to afford the payments on their second car 😉

I don’t agree with the idea that people who are struggling in society and as a result are on sickness benefits and not working are equivalent to indolent teenagers – and I find the association a touch inappropriate.

“This isn’t primarily about economics but work as therapy.”

What a stunning free lunch – we both get output, and we treat these people of the ills they are facing 🙂 .

If it was that easy it would be grand, but this is a tad over-simplistic way of looking at people who are struggling to integrate themselves back into the labour market. These people are making choices, and we should be trying to understand why they make these choices to pick the best policy prescriptions – same way we do with other policies!

If we actually care about the welfare of these people, isn’t the solution making sure that they get appropriate care and treatment to help them move back into the labour force – not attacking them whenever they visit a doctor? As I say in the post, I am a fan of treatment AND using work as a way of doing this, I am not a fan of imposing a cost on people and just stating it is for their own good. As I state at the end of the post:

“There is a world of difference between increasing opportunity by opening
doors to those who are in a bad place, and placing a cost on their
shoulders”

Coming back to the social contract, let us remember that society is filled with heterogenous individuals. Some more comfortable with the way we’ve organised society and with the way we look at and treat work. When someone has sufficiently heterogenous preferences from everyone else, they will be alienated by the way society ends up – and we should really try to have some empathy for this, and think of the best way to be accomodative. Getting their doctor to push them around doesn’t really fit into this!

I would note something at this point. It is these small groups who are very heterogenous who are most heavily displaced by the focus on the social good and the organisation of society around the preferences of the majority (democracy and markets). There is supposed to be a counterpoint to this, that accepts this difference – or we are heavily leaning against their liberty as individuals.

There are two sides to a social contract and if the disadvantaged get 90% of the prime time then it isn’t a contract but an authoritarian decree.. in effect a decree for the perpetuation of poverty, poor health and earlier death plus other social maladies.. it would be the height of irresponsibility if doctors, other officials and experts did not advocate for work as a powerful remedy.

Even the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the disadvantaged and the elderly understand this.. otherwise no conservative Govt could ever be elected if people did not vote against their interests. There are a great many parents of indolent teenagers who would dearly love their doc to tell their kids of the link between physical and mental health and work.

This isn’t primarily about economics but work as therapy.

JC

I remember the Immigration Act reforms a few years back which removed some/many appeal rights by immigrants against deportation being described as a positive to immigrants as ‘they would be returned back to their families in their home countries quicker’. That was the ‘analysis’ of officials, not politicians.

Amazing.

Makes me sad that I’m weighing up my choice by what this government is doing with probability 1 because officials and the public haven’t convinced them not to, versus what an alternative government says it will do with probability less than 1 (hoping they don’t as there’s still time for officials and the public to convince them not to (see Greens and quantitative easing)). Oof.

Used to be a time I was proud to vote for [undisclosed party]. And by proud I mean I was happy that they had more well-reasoned policies than not.

Recent months I’ve been muttering to myself while listening to the radio ‘you’re making it difficult, [undisclosed party]’, and then the other lot do something even stupider according to my values, and I feel better again.

It shouldn’t be that way.